The time up till 2022 and beyond will see a massive shift for job seekers in IT. According to a new report by EY, Engineering students graduating in the next four years will be unable to apply to 65% jobs existing today. Candidates will primarily be hired for skills in Artificial intelligence, machine learning, and IoT in IT organizations which have already started demanding a different skillset from what they acquire in college. Artificial intelligence, Machine Learning, and IoT will closely be followed by Robotics, Automation, Big Data, and Cloud in sync with the new digital economy.

SAP Leonardo India Head, Neeraj Athalye, stated “Artificial intelligence and machine learning will be integrated into the enterprise-software systems that form the heart of most organizational IT infrastructures. We can only guess at the level of automation that will result, but the impact on business – and society – will be significant.”

Furthermore, the SY, NASSCOM, and Ficci report suggested that it was time for the government to overhaul the technical and vocational education systems in order to close the widening gap between organizational expectations and workforce skillset. It recommended that industry and academia should be brought together with fund creations so professionals today are abreast with the technologies of today.

Program Director, Technology at Deloitte India, said “Whilst the overall technology sectors are witnessing global changes and disruptions, both on the technology developments and also regulatory impacts, we continue to be positive about capabilities and eminence of technology businesses in India.” The analytics and robotics sectors have seen the most growth in Deloitte’s top 50 fastest growing companies invested in technology.

Big and small companies are both investing heavily in digital technologies such as Artificial intelligence, User Interface, robotics, etc. And it is not just the IT sector but also BFSI, Manufacturing, Telecommunications, Media, Fintech, and start-ups venturing into automation, Artificial intelligence, and analytics to reduce costs and amplify productivity and efficiency. Most of the hiring is done at junior and middle levels with top leaders being summoned to embrace data-driven decision making.

Key Points from the EY report:

Around three-fourths of the organizations are focused on automating process-oriented tasks and increase employee efficiency, irrespective of their business functions.

Close to 80% of the respondents predict IT-BPM sector being redefined by the digital economy.

72% blamed scarcity of talent as the main reason for slow movement towards automation and software testing as the most threatened profile to be eliminated.Another domain surging is cybersecurity as organizations work towards strengthening their security, mitigating risks and breaches, and minimizing vulnerability.

The Senior Vice President, Global Product Management & Data Centre Services at Tata Communications, Mr. Srinivasan CR said, “As the digital ecosystem grows and technologies progress, the skills needed to deal with cyber-security needs are changing. The challenge is to train cyber-security professionals so that they can deal with threats as quickly as possible and also adapt their skills as needed. There will be some 3.5 million unfilled cyber-security roles by 2021, so it’s up to governments, universities, schools and businesses to collaborate in order to bridge this substantial skills gap.”

But there is a silver lining to all of this. Artificial intelligence will wash away several job profiles but will also create new positions even at the lower and middle levels. Gartner notes that industries like outsourcing will see a massive shift in their business models and it is up to the organizations to use/reinvest the cost saved due to Artificial intelligence in reinventing the wheel and coming up with new business models.